One year
ago I've proposed my idea of Orioncopter
to accomplish a precision Orion's land landing at KSC (to the same
Shuttles' runway) using a set of Cushion
Pads (that
still is the BEST solution) to save
on the weight and the
risks of the
(jettisonable TPS) Orion's landing airbags.

Probably
the "Orioncopter" could be appeared a crazy
idea, but,
just a few months after my article, a reader of my
website has
sent me a mail with a link
to a 2001-5 AIAA study
about a similar
idea (it's really incredible how
close my design
and the Hagen's concept are!)
a very interesting and complete design that shows why idea was not
so crazy... :)

Unfortunately,
both "space-copters" may add some risks at landing and
it's not sure they can help to save weight vs. the land landing's
airbags system.

However,
there is a third
original and smart
solution to have a precision landing at KSC while avoid the salt
water's Ocean landing
(that may damage
the Orion so it can't
be reused)
that is the precision (artificial)
LAKE
LANDING
(always accomplished at
KSC).

This
kind of "lake
landing"
needs to add a couple of (small, cheap, easy to use and very light)
electric-motors-driven PROPELLERS
inside the Orion to be deployed at 3000 m. of altitude (just after
the Orion's main parachutes are completely open) to allow a precision
landing on
land (with
side-mounted airbags or side-landing jets) or (better)
to one small (2
km. by 2 km.
or less) ARTIFICIAL
LAKE (then,
WITHOUT
salt water) build inside the KSC or near it, so, the Orion may
accomplish a precision
lake landing
or (if one or both electric motors fail) an Apollo-like "abort
mode"
ocean landing.

What
is very interesting in this idea is that, add a precision maneuvering
and lake landing option to an Orion, doesn't
cost so much
money (probably just a few thousands dollar) and doesn't
increase so much its weight,
since, two
small electric motors
with two carbon
fiber propellers,
may weigh less
than 100 kg.
also, they can use the residual
electric energy
of the Orion's main electric batteries, then, NO
extra-battery needed!

This
is a sketch of a possible design of my idea of LAKE
landing Orion with its propellers:

And this
is it's landing profile, to be aborted to an ocean landing if a
problem will occurs:

A possible
option
to the KSC's artificial
lake landing,
is to land the Orion on one of the existing US
lakes like
the Chicago's Lake
Michigan.

[update]
If, thanks
to the two electric
powered propellers,
every Orion will be able to perform a very
accurate high-precision land/lake landing at KSC, they
may, also, use an ON
LAND (hundreds
times reusable) inflatable
airbags landing
system, like this:

Build
a 4+
sq. miles artificial lake or inflatable landing base may appear
too expensive...
but, spend a
few million$
to build them, itsn't a problem for NASA that usually spends in
the range of dozens
billion$$$
to just do some R&D (like the $10-14.4 Bn Ares-1 costs) and
is going to spend (at least) $125 Bn (NASA evaluation) to
$230 Bn (GAO evaluation) to develop and build the ESAS hardware
and come back to the Moon... so, the price of a new
lake
(it doesn't matters if made of water or of
hundreds airbags)
is just a sand's
grain for
the NASA costs standards... :)

If
you talk/discuss about this idea on forums, blogs, websites, magazines, newspapersplease acknowledge the source of the idea, putting
a link to my
article. Thank You.